


His and Mine are the Same

by these_dreams_go_on



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: A little bit of angst, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bellarke, F/M, a lot of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:27:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25685776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/these_dreams_go_on/pseuds/these_dreams_go_on
Summary: Clarke couldn't have a soulmate or that's what she told herself. Her soul mark had been burned off the day of the car crash that she had been in with her father. It was sign to her that in this life she wouldn't have love and she blamed herself for the wreck so she didn't think she deserved love either.When she meets Bellamy the history major minoring in English writing. She wished she could have a soulmate more than anything. She was crushing so hard. He enjoyed Bronte and even Jane Austen as much as she did. Tall dark handsome and loves writing almost as much as she does where could she go wrong?
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 12
Kudos: 217
Collections: The t100 Writers for BLM Initiative





	His and Mine are the Same

**Author's Note:**

> I loved this prompt! I'm happy to receive others for Bellarke for BLM!

_But, in spite of these deficiencies, the wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony, were fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union-_

_Emma, Jane Austen_

Clarke was smiling as she closed her well worn copy of Emma, her heart filled with the sense of satisfaction that comes from finishing a book with a happy ending.

It was also a sense of comfort that came from knowing that even with the trials they faced, the protagonists overcame the obstacles and emerged with a happy family and the love of their life.

Of course, none of the protagonists in Austen’s novels ever had a five thousand word essay on Baya Mahieddine’s influence on Picasso, which would be a lot easier if there was a lot more resources on her.

Reluctantly, Clarke put her book down and resisted the urge to glance over at her nightstand where all of Austen’s works and a few of the Bronte sisters were piled precariously high and being kept upright only by the notebooks stacked next to them.

All of them ‘well-loved’, which was a nice way of saying the pages had been dog-eared to mark her place so many times that the creases were permanent, some had coffee stains, and a few were smudged from food spillages.

But books were meant to be read and it wasn’t like any of them had been first editions.

  
“You can buy these five for a dollar at any thrift-shop,” her best friend Wells, had told her, “So who cares if you wreck them, you can buy another one.”

  
Which was kind of ironic seeing as he’d paid twenty-three dollars plus tax buying her first copy of Pride and Prejudice from the hospital gift shop. But she hadn’t had the concentration or the will to draw anything and there hadn’t been any decent magazines.

It had taken her another day and complete and utter boredom before she’d been able to pick it up and start reading, but once she had she’d found an escape from the horror and despair that had become her entire world.

She had been sixteen years old and lying in a hospital bed with a broken leg, recovering from an appendectomy and with second and third degree burns on her left hip and stomach.

But worse than all that, she had lost her father.

  
No matter how hard she tried to recall that night, it only ever came back to her in flashes and sensations.

Bright lights, the crack of her head against the dashboard, momentary blindness, the scratch of glass shards against her skin.

Smoke, the smell of roast pork which she’d later realise was burning flesh.

Agonizing pain in her side.

Unconsciousness.

  
But the worst pain had come when she’d woken up in the hospital, in a room by herself until a nurse passing by had noticed and fetched her doctor.

The man had been so apathetic as he listed her injuries, broken this, fractured that, he hadn’t even shown a stab of sympathy until he’d mentioned her soulmark.

The third-degree burn had been too damaging, there was nothing they could have done to even begin trying to save it. He was sorry.

Beside him, the nurse had been sniffling, dabbing at her eyes in empathetic grief but Clarke hadn’t even begun to register the loss of such an integral part of herself, she’d only been relieved that her injuries had been the worst of it.

She’d managed to thank him and then ask about her parents.

  
“Oh, your father was pronounced dead at the scene,” he’d told her, almost flippantly, “My apologies…now about your soulmark…”

  
And for the next three months, that was how so many of her conversations had gone.

  
_‘Sorry about your father, terrible tragedy, but have you made any decisions about replacing your soulmark?’_

_‘Oh, I wouldn’t be able to go on after losing my soulmark, I’m sorry to hear about Jack by the way…sorry, Jake, he was a good man.’_

  
When the drunk driver who’d run the red light, rammed their car, flipping it over twice and into a wall had gone to trial, his lawyer had actually cared more about having the charge of destruction of a soulmark dismissed than the manslaughter charge.

Which Clarke hadn’t understood until the judge had given him one year probation for killing her father and five years in county jail for the loss of her soulmark.

The world had thought three inches of skin on the side of her hip was more important than her father’s life.

After that, she’d refused point blank to get plastic surgery to cover the scarring on her hip and hadn’t entertained getting her soulmark replaced with a tattoo.

Soulmarks were for people who didn’t guilt their father’s into driving them to the art store on rainy Saturday nights because they couldn’t wait until Monday for their pastels.

Besides, none of Austen’s heroines had ever had a soulmark, even though there had been knowledge of their existence in Regency England.

* * *

  
This comes up in her Creative Writing tutorial on Monday morning when she hasn’t had enough coffee to deal with the girl three seats over from her trying to dismiss Clarke’s short story because ‘if she didn’t write about soulmates than she wasn’t writing about true love’

She’s prepping herself to verbally tear this girl to shreds so thoroughly that she’ll need to stop off at the campus counsellors after class and make a block booking when another voice speaks up instead.

  
“Are you really going to dismiss centuries of authors and playwrights just because they didn’t give their characters soulmarks?” he demands, before the T.A who was staring at the girl in stunned disbelief,

“Have you ever considered how _rare_ soulmarks are?” he continues, “And they weren’t even scientifically proven until like 1956, before that it was just rumours and legend, plus a lot of people don’t know anyone with a soulmark.”

  
Clarke doesn’t have to look around to know who it is defending her work. She hadn’t actually caught his name yet, but she knew him as the tall, dark and handsome guy who perpetually distracted her with his gorgeous face and even more stunning voice.

  
“Besides,” Clarke injects, “My piece was set in Regency England and soulmarks are usually on people’s breasts, hips, or thighs, how exactly would my character have found her soulmate without ruining her reputation?”

“And a mainstream audience won't be able to relate to the idea of soulmarks anyway,” the guy interjects smoothly, “Why write about soulmarks when she could still write about love without alienating the people reading her works?”

  
The girl is now looking down her nose at the both of them,

  
“Some people think representation in literature is important.” She states, curling her lip in disgust and Clarke resists the urge to throw her copy of Bronte at her.

  
It was a hardback copy of Wuthering Heights; she’d be looking at assault charges if it connected.

  
“Do you have a soulmark?” she demands and the girl gapes as those who were listening to the conversation and not taking the chance to check their phones or catch up on the reading, straighten up and lean in.

  
The girl is opening and closing her mouth like a fish underwater, her cheeks burning either at being asked a personal question which even in the twenty-first century was still considered intimate or at realising that she had left it too long to lie.

  
“Obviously not,” Clarke finishes, “But soulmates aren’t exactly at risk of being discriminated against, I doubt they’re upset that they aren’t featured in one piece of work when they’re mentioned in Bronte and so many other works of literature and media.”

  
The T.A takes this chance to regain control of the discussion and move it into the next persons work.

Meanwhile, Clarke tries to subtly shift in her seat, so she enjoy watching her crush out of the corner of her eye.

He was handsome, with gorgeous curls, a chiselled jawline, a blue t-shirt that did nothing to hide his muscled arms. His eyes were friendly and attentive, but what really drew her eye was his copy of Jane Eyre.

It was in an even more ‘well-loved’ condition than hers.

* * *

  
Next week, he’s there before she is and so deep into a book that she doesn’t think he’d even notice if the building caught fire. His eyes flicker up at hers as she sits down next to him and they share a brief smile before he goes back to his reading.

Which is fine, because she has her own book to peruse.

It just happens that they’re reading the same title and they share a chuckle when the holds it out to him.

The week after that, they find themselves in the same café buying coffee before class and he waits for her to collect her order.

  
“I enjoyed your Regency Romance,” he offers by way of greeting, “But very different from your usual dystopia fics.”

She tries to hide her grin behind her coffee cup, “I’d just finished Austen that weekend, I was in a period drama frame of mind.”

  
She learns that his name is Bellamy Blake, he’s a History major with a minor in Creative Writing, a little sister and he lives off campus in the same student apartments as her.

She learns that he started writing fiction when he was twelve because his little sister liked stories where women were the main characters but hated damsels-in-distress and there hadn’t been enough of a range out there for her, so he’d had to write his own.

By the time they get to class, she reckons that- her embarrassing crush on him aside- they’d make good friends.

For now.

And when the T.A announces that they’ll be working in pairs for an upcoming assignment, they’ve barely finished speaking before Clarke turns to face him and they share a nod.

Of course, they have to exchange numbers and add each other on social media so they can get in contact.

And if Clarke maybe checks to see if he’s single, that’s only out of a desire to know more about him.

They’d been given a list of questions to choose from and had picked the one asking them to choose a character in fiction whose alignment as hero, anti-hero or villain was often debated.

They’d both suggested Lady Susan- and Clarke had imagined herself in a wedding dress, because why not? It’s her fantasy, she can do what she wants- but it had led to a half-hour text argument between the two of them, because Clarke was arguing anti-hero and Bellamy is arguing villain and she either won by convincing him or he realises that she wasn’t going to give up. 

She invites him over to work on their project and sets her coffee table with Earl Grey tea and some shortbread biscuits to really set the theme.

He chuckles when he sees them but accepts the tea with two sugar cubes and gives in to her suggestion that they watch Pride and Prejudice to really get into the mindset.

  
“Don’t tell anyone,” he begins as the opening scene blooms across their television, “But I prefer this version to the BBC one.”

She snorts into her tea, “I made the mistake of mentioning that once and had to endure a twenty minute lecture about how Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen would never be better than Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth- which is the only reason I remember all their names.”

He hums sympathetically, and she turns away from the screen to face him, “So, why do you prefer this version?”

He shakes his head, grinning ruefully, “That’s a bit of a story…”

She shrugs, “And I’m interested.”

  
He looks at her then, really looks at her and whatever he sees in her eyes must have been enough for him because he reveals his intimate truth to her.

  
“When I was a kid, my family didn’t have much growing up with my dad being dead and Octavia’s dad being a deadbeat who skipped out on child support. My mom couldn’t afford to buy us books, but she did take us to the library. I loved the ancients; I knew how to read the plays of Euripides and Sophocles and I could work from there to Ovid and the Iliad. But when I tried classical literature…I don’t know, I could get through it, the writing was too difficult or I couldn’t concentrate and when I asked a librarian for help…he sent me to the kids fiction section.”

  
Clarke frowned in displeasure and was making a mental note to send a strongly worded email to the library in question before realising that this would have been over a decade ago and the librarian in question might have retired or- preferably- been fired.

  
“I didn’t go to a great middle school or high-school either,” he continues, “The books we read were really simple, and our teachers either didn’t care or were just too burnt out and our library was…almost non-existent. But one night, this film was on tv and I watched it with my mom and then the next time we were in a thrift store, I found an old copy of Pride and Prejudice. It was falling apart but it was less than a dollar and I could afford it, so I bought it. And I finished it in a weekend because I’d seen the film so I could picture it in my mind and understand what was happening. After that, I went to the library and borrowed Sense and Sensibility, the movie and the book and then I was able to read Emma without having to watch the film first. I still haven’t worked up the courage to read Moby Dick,” he added, self-depreciatingly, “But I’m slowly making my way through Hemingway, but I’ll never forget Austen.”

Clarke grinned, “She was your gateway author.” she declared, and he chuckled,

“Yes, she was.”

“What about you?” he asks, the movie still playing in the background and her smile fades,

“I…uh…I was in a car accident when I was sixteen and stuck in the hospital for a while,” she explained, avoiding his eyes so she didn’t have to see the flash of automatic sympathy there,

“And my best friend bought me Pride and Prejudice because there wasn’t anything decent in the giftshop. And during my recovery, there wasn’t much I could do but I could read and finishing it felt like an achievement and since then…a comfort.”

“Because no matter what, you know it ends happily?” he guessed and she nods,

“Yeah, when I’m not reading Bronte, obviously,” she notes and he hums in agreement, “but even then, when I know there isn’t a happy ending, I feel a sense of completion, having reached the end.”

  
She opens her mouth and closes it again as she tries to figure out what to say next, because her heart is compelling her to tell him why she’s always experimenting with dystopian fiction, that she writes about the world having ended the same day her dad died and it brings her comfort to imagine it did for everyone else, not just her. But her head is pointing out that that’s too much to unload on somebody when they’re not even on their first date and even if she doesn’t deserve love, she does deserve his friendship.

  
“The hell with Moby Dick though,” she states, trying to lighten the mood, “I’ve heard it’s just hyper-fixation on a sperm whale.”

  
He laughs.

They watch the rest of the movie, and strongly resist the urge to put on another but only because their laptops are sitting in front of them, coldly reminding them of their duty.

From there, figuring out their presentation and dividing up the work is almost too easy and disappointingly quick. Fortunately, she manages to convince him to get a start on their research because her Wi-Fi is amazing and that buys her another hour of casual banter between the two of them while she tries to come up with another reason to keep him there.

Offering to cook him dinner is off the table, her fridge is basically empty because she lives off pasta, noodles and take-out.

Neither of them are really dressed to go out drinking and besides, she doesn’t want to move from their position right there at her dining table where his long legs have stretched out and are almost tangled up in her own, where she can look up and catch his eyes, where they’re only a few feet from her couch and at no risk of interruptions.

The two of them share another smile and she melts at how sexy his grin is- along with every other bit of him visible to the naked eye. She can feel the tension in the air- and it can’t just be her, right?- and as much as she wants to act on it, either by lunging across the table and kissing him or straight up inviting him to a make-out session, there’s also another part of her that enjoys drawing it out.

Being desired.

It begins to grow dark outside, the bright day sinking into twilight and she sees Bellamy glancing at the window with what she hopes is reluctance, the knowledge that he should leave clashing with the understanding that he doesn’t want to.

Still, when he stands and stretches, murmuring about heading home, she can’t think of a viable reason to delay him and even though she’d fantasized about propositioning him, she doesn’t have the courage to actually go through with it.

She gets to her feet as he packs up his laptop, hovering awkwardly and trying to smother her disappointment as she fights down the impulse to suggest another movie or perhaps an in-depth discussion of Wuthering Heights and whether it was a tragedy or an epic romance.

She walks him to her door, all twenty feet and opens it for him,

  
“Thanks for coming.” she manages in what she hopes is a friendly but casual tone,

“Thanks for having me.” He replies and then a moment of awkward silence, neither of them moving but staring into each other’s eyes and waiting for something to happen, possibly for the other to break first. 

  
Bellamy surrenders only a second before Clarke,

  
“Can…May I kiss you?” he asks,

“Kiss me?” she suggests.

  
They’re both smiling as he leans in, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and cupping her face and they have to take a moment before he can brush his lips against hers, but once he does, she opens her mouth to deepen the kiss and their smiles are gone, replaced by lust and urgency.

He was very good at kissing and the way he walked her gently back against the wall instead of pushing her? Very considerate, almost gentlemanly.

Clarke tries not to giggle at that stray thought and chooses instead to lose herself in the moment, to the feel of his lips on her neck and his hands on her hips.

  
“Couch.” she suggests as he slips a knee between her legs and she runs her hands up his chest. He lifts his head and nods breathlessly, allowing her to grab his hand and tug him backwards until her knees hit the cushions and she sat down before he leaned over her, luring her onto her back.

They kiss again and she pulls him down on top of her, tangling their legs together and she runs her hands up and down his back, tangling her fingers into his shirt and beginning to slide it up slowly, giving him a chance to stop her if he wanted.

Instead, he rears back up onto his knees and pulls it off for her, throwing it behind him and she laughs at his eagerness until it catches her eye.

On his right hip, there was three inches of skin where two planets overlapped each other.

  
He catches her looking and shakes his head, “It’s okay,” he assures her, “I haven’t found them yet.”

He goes to kiss her again, but she turns her head away, staring at the couch pillow as she struggles to find her voice, “I…think you should go.” she finally manages, not able to look at him.

“But…” he trails off, “I haven’t…Clarke, I have no idea who my soulmate is.”

Her only response is to cross her arms over her chest and when she feels him get off the couch, she closes her eyes, choosing instead to listen as he slips his shirt over his head and trudges to the door, picking his bag off the floor.

She hears the door open, but Bellamy doesn’t step through it, “I know it doesn’t sound great,” he admits, “But I don’t think it’s cheating if I haven’t even met my soulmate yet.”

“Please leave!” she cries, almost choking on the words and when the door closes, she rolls onto her side and curls up into a ball, pressing her fist to her mouth to try and smother the sound of her sobs.

Two planets overlapping each other.

Clarke had lived sixteen years of her life with that soulmark on her left hip.

Bellamy Blake was her soulmate.

* * *

  
For the first time in her entire academic life Clarke skips class on Monday, unable to bear the thought of getting out of bed and going out into the world as if everything was perfectly fine.

Everything was not fine.

Bellamy Blake was her soulmate.

And she had no idea how she felt about that.

She had deliberately not thought about soulmates for four years, refusing to answer any questions about her soulmark or entertain the idea that someone out there was looking for her, was waiting for her.

Soulmates were for people who didn’t get their father killed.

Soulmates were for people who fought harder for justice when a judge decided three inches of skin meant more than a human life.

Soulmates were for people who could see the image of two planets overlapping one another and not be consumed by searing jealousy.

Because that was the strangest part of it all, she had never missed her soulmark, not really, until she had met Bellamy and begun to fantasize about being his soulmate, until she had seen its exact replica on his skin and been filled with such a sense of longing to have that part of her back.

But she couldn’t get it back and that was why she couldn’t be with Bellamy.

So she ignored his texts, his attempts to call her and then the letter he slid under her door. The only means of communication she answered were his emails about their project, and even then, she kept it short and strictly professional.

If she gave him the cold shoulder long enough, he’d surely get the message and leave her alone? She’d already hit the required attendance for their shared class, she could skip the rest of the semester and just turn up for the presentation.

Which is what she resolves to do.

  
Clarke had planned the day of the presentation down to the last minute, she lingers in the hallway and arrives on the heel of the T.A, momentarily thrown when her usual seat next to Bellamy is taken but recovering quickly and managing to get one closer to the door.

She can sense the exact moment he spots her but the T.A is already speaking and asking which group would want to go first.

She’s pretty sure she breaks some record with the speed in which she raises her hand and she’s preparing for a Karen-worthy throat clearing, more than happy to destroy her reputation and be seen as entitled if it means going first when the T.A decides to check his roll call and announce Bellamy’s name.

She reaches the lectern a few seconds before Bellamy and deliberately keeps her head down as she turns the system on and reaches for her…

She doesn’t have her flash drive.

A moment of panic and her face flushes red as she pats down her pockets, about to have to admit this failure to the T.A and be humiliated in class when Bellamy’s hand grazes her back. 

  
“I bought my copy.” Bellamy murmurs, plugging it in and Clarke notices that the flash drive is a miniature of a roman emperor.

  
She ignores how adorable she finds this and clears her throat as the lights dim just enough for the screen to be visible.

Despite the fact that they hadn’t practised their presentation at all, it goes well, with the transition between the slides and their different parts going smoothly and at the end they even get polite applause from the class.

  
“You two work very well together.” the T.A tells them with a smarmy grin and Clarke decides to knock three points off the end of semester student review she knows the course hands out.

She settles for a tight smile and leaves Bellamy to close their presentation and prepare the lectern for the next group.

And she focuses on the following presentations with an intensity she usually reserved for her art history classes, she took notes, she asked questions at the end which were designed to help the presenters gain extra marks because they were pretty easy to answer.

And the second the T.A checked his watch and announced they were out of time; Clarke was out of her seat so fast she’s pretty certain she’d left while he was still speaking.

It didn’t matter though, she’s only halfway across the Agora when Bellamy cuts off her path and she’s so surprised that he managed to overtake her that she slows to a stop and looks over her shoulder.

  
“I ran track in high school,” he offers by way of explanation, “And I know the humanities department building like the back of my hand.”

“Good for you.” she mumbles, trying to go around him but he follows her,

“Clarke,” he calls, “Please speak to me.”

“I honestly didn’t think you’d care about my soulmark,” he continues when she doesn’t speak and she’s wearing heeled boots, she knows she probably couldn’t outrun him.

“It’s just another part of me.”

And that’s the moment when her jealousy gets the better of her.

“Your hair is _just another part_ of you,” she snaps, turning on him and surprising him with the ferocity in her voice, “The fact that you ran track in high school is just another part of you, your soulmark is an integral part of your genetic make-up and not something that can just be disrespected or ignored Bellamy. Both you and I…your soulmate deserve better than that.”

  
He doesn’t notice her slip and she thanks a god she hasn’t believed in since she was sixteen years old. He seems distressed, running a hand through his hair as he takes a step towards her and she backtracks,

  
“I know we’ve only known each other a few weeks,” he sighs, “But Clarke, what I feel for you…I don’t want to lose what we have waiting around for someone I might never even meet.”

 _‘You’ve already met your soulmate!’_ her heart wants to scream at him, _‘I’m your soulmate’_

 _‘Let him go,’_ her head tells her, _‘He’s better off without you.’_

She listens to her head and walks away without a response, making it all the way home before the tears start streaming down her face.

Unfortunately, Wells Jaha, her best friend in the world, has very little sympathy for her when she calls him a few hours later.

  
“Clarke, I love you,” he shouts in an exasperated tone, “But you’re being an idiot.”

  
Lying on her bed, she only lifts her head up enough to sip wine from her coffee mug- because it’s that kind of pity party- before lying back against her pillows.

  
“Kick me while I’m down why don’t you.” she moans and looks up into his face glaring at her from her phone screen.

“You’re down because you put yourself there,” he states with no remorse, “You’re letting your trauma and resentment of your soulmark from four years ago control your life now,” he elaborates smoothly either as if he’s thought this out beforehand or changes his degree from law to psychology without telling her.

“And I understand,” he continues, “Anyone who knew your situation would understand but denying yourself a chance for happiness, to be with this guy won’t change what happened, it’ll just cause you to stagnate until you drive him away.”

She closes her eyes and exhales, “He’s my soulmate,” she argues weakly, “He’s not going anywhere.”

“Soulmarks don’t override free will,” Wells counters, “He doesn’t have to get down on one knee just because you two got matching pigmentations at birth.”

She groans and stomps her foot down on her comforter, “I called you to comfort me,” she whines, and he smirks affectionately at her tantrum, “I hate you.”

“You hate me because I’m right,” he crows, “Because you know you need to tell him who you are to each other and why that scares you so much.”

  
Wells is her lifelong best friend, so she knows he’ll forgive her for hanging up on him and throwing her phone to the other side of her bed so she can lick her wounds and have  
her pity party in peace.

Except Clarke’s pity party comes to an abrupt and noisy end a few days later with the knocking on her door.

“Avon calling!” a female voice cries, “Have you heard about our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ?”

Considering those were two different type of cold callers, Clarke thinks one of her neighbours must be drunk, even though it was 9am on a Wednesday. Still, she answers and sees a pretty, perky brunette with more energy in her eyes than Clarke could find after three double espressos.

  
“Hi!” she beams, “These are for you.”

  
She shoves something at Clarke and bounds off before she can even get her hands wrapped around it, nearly dropping it before getting a grip at the last second. The feel of cardboard under her fingers tells her that it’s a box and when her mind catches up to her reflexes, she can see it’s holding a bouquet.

A bouquet of paper flowers.

The paper had been dyed pink with what Clarke suspects is food colouring and as she leans in, she can recognise the pages that had been printed.

The final passages of Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre and Emma.

She doesn’t even have to look at the envelope tucked between the stems to know that it was from Bellamy.

She sets it down on her coffee table and stares at it for the longest time.

Her heart tells her to read the letter, to give him the decency of reading what he’d written, but her head points out that he’s operating under the delusion that he’s never met his soulmate.

And that she owed him the truth.

She doesn’t feel strong enough to invite him over to her apartment, so she stakes out a local park, checks the weather forecast for the week, crime rate for the area to make sure it’s not a popular murder zone and then, when she’s out of excuses, she grabs her phone and opens up her chat with him.

She doesn’t read any of the texts Bellamy had sent her, scrolling past them quickly and tapping out her message.

  
_Text Message_

_To Bellamy: Can we talk?_

_To Bellamy: Polis Park today at 12?_

_To Bellamy: I owe you an explanation_

_To Clarke: I’ll be there._

Even though she’s the one that set the time, she’s almost late, having to jaywalk across the busy road and entering the park at a jog, heading straight to the seats by the lake before realising that she hadn’t told Bellamy where to meet her.

Taking a moment to curse herself for being an idiot, she scans the mostly deserted park before seeing the white gazebo on the edge of the water and knowing without a doubt that Bellamy would be there.

She’s honestly surprised to see him without a book in his hand and he looks up from his phone when he hears her arrive,

  
“I wasn’t sure you were coming,” he blurts out and she winces as she checks her watch,

  
“I’m sorry,” she says, “I had to get something printed and it took longer than I planned.”

“Thank you for the bouquet, by the way.” she added, nervously tucking a strand of hair behind her ear as she sat down across from him.

“O, my sister helped,” he admits, “We went from flowers to hand-dying our own paper.”

“It was the most thoughtful gift anyone has made me,” she tells him before reaching into her bag, “Um…I didn’t read the letter you wrote me but I had a reason that’ll make sense in a minute.”

  
Except her hands are shaking and she can’t bring herself to open the packet, so she puts her hands in her lap and tries another way.

  
“I told you that I was in an accident when I was sixteen,” she reminded him, “Well, my dad was driving and he…he died at the scene…” she pauses to take a breath,

“I had some scarring on my hip which people were more concerned about than the fact that I lost my father.”

  
Bellamy’s face shows compassion but also confusion, he doesn’t understand what this had to do with her rejection of him.

She takes a deep breath and grabs the packet from her bag, ripping it open and ripping part of the photo in the process, she quickly flips it open to make sure the most important part is undamaged before reaching across the space between them to hand it to him,

  
“I…uh…deleted most of my photos that showed it after I lost it,” she babbles, “Thankfully, my best friend kept some on his facebook page.”

Bellamy glances at the photo of her at the Jaha beach house in her bikini at fifteen before looking back up at her, “Clarke…I don’t understand,”

She manages a weak smile, “Look closer, it’s not super clear but it’s visible enough to make out.”

  
He frowns a little as he studies the photo and then she can tell the exact second, he sees her soulmark because he freezes and the blood rushes from his face. He brings it closer to his eyes and she finds that funny for some reason,

  
“Two planets overlapping one another,” she tells him, “Which is why I haven’t read your letter yet…because you wrote it thinking you hadn’t met your soulmate when in fact…”

“It’s _you_ ,” he finishes for her, “You’re my soulmate.”

“And I freaked out when I saw your soulmark because of everything my soulmark had meant to me, both good and bad,” she confesses, “It wasn’t fair to you and I’m sorry.”

“You lost your soulmark in the accident?” he guesses and she nods, twisting slightly as she lifts up her t-shirt to show him the scarring on her hip, “And everybody cared more about that than the fact that you lost your dad,” he continues,

“The judge gave the drunk driver one year probation for my dad’s death and five years for the loss of my soulmark.”

He shakes his head, “I would have been pissed too.”

For some reason that makes her chuckle, “Does that mean you’re not angry with me?”

“I forgive you,” he assures her, “Even without everything that happened, people always warned me that finding your soulmate is terrifying and overwhelming and honestly, if you’d told me that night I might have pushed you away too.”

  
He hands her back the photo and she rips it in half before dropping the pieces back in her bag,

  
“So, what now?” he asks, and she bites her lip,

“I’m not sure,” she answers honestly, “I…can we go back to where we were before we found out we were soulmates?”

He ducks his head and grins, “You mean when we were making out on your couch?”

She nods, “Except perhaps this time we try my bed?”

  
He gets to his feet and holds out his hand, pulling her up and then tugging her into his arms,

  
“If this were one of our favourite books, I’d say something romantic right now,” he murmurs,

“But all I can think about is how much I want to kiss you.”

She smiles and closes the distance between them, “That’ll do.”


End file.
